Chicken Little

Last week, the sky fell. While moving the portable chicken tractor through the orchard, one of the chicks didn't move quickly enough and got caught under the wooden frame as we set it down. Once we lifted the fallen sky off of the little chick, she couldn't stand up. A brief exam revealed a floppy leg with a palpable distal femur fracture (translation: a break in the thigh bone just above the knee that I could feel with my fingers). Diagnosis made, the question became one of prognosis. "That chick is going to die," I was told. Feeling like I had nothing to lose at this point, I decided to play veterinarian. It didn't seem right that a chick should die from a simple broken leg.

With a stick and tape, I fashioned a makeshift splint for the chick's leg. Because the injured stick kept getting stepped on by her siblings and mom, I moved her into an infirmary consisting on a large cardboard box with a chicken wire roof. Unfortunately, the first splint fell off within a few hours (waterproof first aid tape is a waste of money) and its replacement didn't fare much better. My third try was the charm. Trimming the chick's feathers out of the way, I wrapped her leg snugly with gauze, then created a cast out of strips of duct tape. The cast is still in place after a week, so I'm pretty satisfied.

With the help of our summer campers, I named the chick Hope Mabel (Hope as in "I hope she gets better"). Hope does seem to be getting better. She is eating, drinking, and pooping, as well as hopping around on her good leg. On an online forum about chickens, I read about chicks with broken legs making a full recovery, so I remain hopeful that this chick will grow up into a strong layer. I don't actually know if the chick is a girl, but I am working under that assumption because this seems like too much work to put into a rooster destined for the soup pot. A layer, on the other hand, is well worth the investment of time and resources. Here's to hoping...

Hope Mabel Chick sports her gauze and duct tape "cast."